Shared Parenting

To see the importance of shared parenting, consider how you, as an adult,
would feel if you could see your children only four days a month. Like most
parents, you would miss them terribly, even with your adult level of emotional
maturity. Children, with their fragile, still-developing emotions, often
suffer much more. Children naturally love and need both parents. Sadly, most
children of divorce see their non-custodial parent only four days a month.
The concept of shared parenting, or joint custody, was developed
about 1970 to help provide for the active participation of both parents
in raising their children. The first joint custody statute was passed in
Indiana in 1973, and since then shared parenting has spread to all 50 states.

Children need
both parents

Shared parenting helps provide emotional stability for children by promoting
the involvement of both parents. There are two aspects to shared parenting
in divorce: joint legal custody, which refers to shared decision
making responsibility between divorced parents, and joint physical custody,
which provides children with a more balanced residential arrangement
than was allowed under sole custody. With joint physical custody, children
spend at least 30% of their time with each parent. This may be accomplished
with an evenly balanced, alternating week arrangement, or through other
arrangements that provide ways for the children to spend significant amounts
of time with both parents. Joint legal custody has become the norm
in most states in the U.S. Joint physical custody is less common, but
Federal government statistics show that joint physical custody was awarded
in more than one fifth of divorces in 1994, and in some states has become
the predominant type of custody award.

"Although the dispute is symbolized by a 'versus' which signifies
two adverse parties at opposite poles of a line, there is in fact a third
party whose interests and rights make of the line a triangle. That
person, the child who is not an official party to the lawsuit but whose
well-being is in the eye of the controversy, has a right to shared parenting
when both are equally suited to provide it. Inherent in the express public
policy is a recognition of the child's right to equal access and opportunity
with both parents, the right to be guided and nurtured by both parents,
the right to have major decisions made by the application of both parents'
wisdom, judgement and experience. The child does not forfeit these rights
when the parents divorce."